The editor's lucid introduction, marginal glosses, and explanatory annotations make Troilus and Criseyde easily accessible to students with no prior knowledge of Chaucer or Middle English. Also included is Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, the poignant "sequel" to Troilus and Criseyde from fifteenth-century Scotland. "Criticism" includes ten essays by a diverse group of distinguished Chaucerians, among them C. S. Lewis, E. Talbot Donaldson, Karla Taylor, Lee Patterson, and Jill Mann, that illuminate the major scholarly issues raised by this complex and challenging poem. A Glossary and Selected Bibliography are also included

Praise for the Aubrey/Maturin Series and Patrick O'Brian "The best historical novels ever written." -Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review "I love these books.... [They offer] the same sense of lived experience as Hilary Mantel.... They will sweep you away and return you delighted, increased and stunned. If the phrase 'Napoleonic war fiction' fills you with anticipation, then you don't need me to convince you to read [Patrick] O'Brian. But for the rest of you.... [P]lease, just trust me." -Nicola Griffith, NPR "A few books work their way... onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence-witness The Lord of the Rings, or Patrick O'Brian's sea stories." -Ursula K. Le Guin "Like John LeCarré, [O'Brian] has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from 'serious' fiction. O'Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have." -Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Patrick O'Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader... savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity." -Eudora Welty "O'Brian's eloquent admirers include not merely distinguished critics and reviewers but... thousands upon thousands of fervent readers who thank the gods for him.... [H]is work accomplishes nobly the three grand purposes of art: to entertain, to edify, and to awe." -Stephen Becker, Paris Review "For escapist reading, I especially like the sea novels of Patrick O'Brian." -Bill Bryson "O'Brian's narrative... provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises-comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity." -A. S. Byatt "I prefer the Aubrey-Maturin series to all others.... Every book is packed to absolute straining with erudition, wit, history, and thunderous action." -Joe Hill "All of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian [is on my shelves]." -Mindy Kaling, New York Times

Bestselling and much loved author Neil Gaiman, whose novel American Gods has been adapted into a major television series, brings vividly to life the stories of Norse mythology that have inspired his own extraordinary writing in this number one Sunday Times Bestseller. The great Norse myths are woven into the fabric of our storytelling - from Tolkien, Alan Garner and Rosemary Sutcliff to Game of Thrones and Marvel Comics. They are also an inspiration for Neil Gaiman's own award-bedecked, bestselling fiction. Now he reaches back through time to the original source stories in a thrilling and vivid rendition of the great Norse tales. Gaiman's gods are thoroughly alive on the page - irascible, visceral, playful, passionate - and the tales carry us from the beginning of everything to Ragnarok and the twilight of the gods. Galvanised by Gaiman's prose, Thor, Loki, Odin and Freya are irresistible forces for modern readers and the crackling, brilliant writing demands to be read aloud around an open fire on a freezing, starlit night

Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics. One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky's extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis's own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.

From ants scurrying under leaf litter to bees able to fly higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, insects are everywhere. Three out of every four of our planet's known animal species are insects. In The Insect Crisis, acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world? Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it? With urgency and great clarity, Milman explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. He joins the scientists tracking the decline of insect populations across the globe, including the soaring mountains of Mexico that host an epic, yet dwindling, migration of monarch butterflies; the verdant countryside of England that has been emptied of insect life; the gargantuan fields of U.S. agriculture that have proved a killing ground for bees; and an offbeat experiment in Denmark that shows there aren't that many bugs splattering into your car windshield these days. These losses not only further tear at the tapestry of life on our degraded planet; they imperil everything we hold dear, from the food on our supermarket shelves to the medicines in our cabinets to the riot of nature that thrills and enlivens us. Even insects we may dread, including the hated cockroach, or the stinging wasp, play crucial ecological roles, and their decline would profoundly shape our own story. By connecting butterfly and bee, moth and beetle from across the globe, the full scope of loss renders a portrait of a crisis that threatens to upend the workings of our collective history. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, The Insect Crisis is a wake-up call for us all.

CHRISTOPHER NORTONS LEITFADEN ZUM MICROJAZZ-BUCH MIT PLAYALONG-CD Boosey & Hawkes

The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available-sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we're attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? In Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body's failings. When and how does a person decide they'd be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina? Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a "superclean" xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell "hair nursery" in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International. Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.

This Norton Critical Edition of The Conjure Stories arranges the tales chronologically by composition date, allowing readers to discern how Chesnutt experimented with plots and characters and with the idea of the conjure story over time. With one exception, the text of each tale is that of the original publication. (The text of "The Dumb Witness" was established from two typescripts held at the archives of Fisk University.) The stories are accompanied by a thorough and thought-provoking introduction, detailed explanatory annotations, and illustrative materials. "Contexts" presents a wealth of materials chosen by the editors to enrich the reader's understanding of these canonical stories, including a map of the landscape of the conjure tales, Chesnutt's journal entry as he began writing fiction of the South, as well as writings by Chesnutt, William Wells Brown, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others, on the stories' central motifs-folklore, superstition, voodoo, race, and social identity in the South following the Civil War. "Criticism" is divided into two parts. "Early Criticism" collects critical notices for The Conjure Woman that suggest the volume's initial reception, assessments by William Dean Howells and Benjamin Brawley, and a biographical excerpt by the author's daughter, Helen Chesnutt. "Modern Criticism" demonstrates rich and enduring interest in The Conjure Stories with ten important essays by Robert Hemenway, William L. Andrews, Robert B. Stepto, John Edgar Wideman, Werner Sollors, Houston A. Baker, Eric J. Sundquist, Richard H. Brodhead, Candace J. Waid, and Glenda Carpio. A Chronology of Chesnutt's life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

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Als Emily Wilsons Übersetzung der Odyssee 2017 erschien, enthüllte sie das antike Gedicht in einer zeitgenössischen Sprache, die intellektuelle Autorität mit fesselnder Lesbarkeit verbindet. Die Kritiker lobten sie als Offenbarung und kulturelles Wahrzeichen, das für immer verändern würde, wie Homer im Englischen gelesen wird. Nun ist Wilson mit einer ebenso aufschlussreichen Übersetzung des ersten grossen homerischen Epos zurückgekehrt: der Ilias. In Wilsons Händen galoppiert dieses aufregende und oft erschreckende Werk nun in einem Tempo, das seinen Kampfszenen gerecht wird, dröhnend mit dem Lärm der Waffen, den prahlerischen Rufen der Sieger und den qualvollen Schreien sterbender Männer. Wilsons ungeschmückte, aber klangvolle Sprache ergründet die tiefgründige Tragik des Gedichts und zeigt seine Charaktere als greifbar reale, sogar komplizierte Menschen. Nach einem Jahrzehnt intensiven Engagements mit Homers Poesie bietet Wilsons Ilias nun eine vollständige Homer-Darstellung für unsere Generation.

Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living," yet take no steps to live examined ones. We know that he was tried, convicted, and executed for "corrupting the youth," but freely assign Socratic dialogues to today's youths, to introduce them to philosophy. We've lost sight of what made him so dangerous. In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates' thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life. Callard draws our attention to Socrates' startling discovery that we don't know how to ask ourselves the most important questions-about how we should live, and how we might change. Before a person even has a chance to reflect, their bodily desires or the forces of social conformity have already answered on their behalf. To ask the most important questions, we need help. Callard argues that the true ambition of the famous "Socratic method" is to reveal what one human being can be to another. You can use another person in many ways-for survival, for pleasure, for comfort-but you are engaging them to the fullest when you call on them to help answer your questions and challenge your answers. Callard shows that Socrates' method allows us to make progress in thinking about how to manage romantic love, how to confront one's own death, and how to approach politics. In the process, she gives us nothing less than a new ethics to live by.

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry" to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young "Burmie" she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. "Brilliantly imaginative . . . in a terrifying way" (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the tradition of T. C. Boyle's finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family-including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd-are struggling to adapt to the "new normal," in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope. But there's more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal façade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet's future. From pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which "the only truism seems to be that things always get worse." An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyle's Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and "inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything."

For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while walking over the heath; Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. From forest paths in Korea to islands in Finland to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science at the confluence of environment, mood, health and creativity. Delving into new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our lives shift indoors, these ideas-and the answers they yield-are more urgent than ever.

Praise for the Aubrey/Maturin Series and Patrick O'Brian "The best historical novels ever written." -Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review "I love these books.... [They offer] the same sense of lived experience as Hilary Mantel.... They will sweep you away and return you delighted, increased and stunned. If the phrase 'Napoleonic war fiction' fills you with anticipation, then you don't need me to convince you to read [Patrick] O'Brian. But for the rest of you.... [P]lease, just trust me." -Nicola Griffith, NPR "A few books work their way... onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence-witness The Lord of the Rings, or Patrick O'Brian's sea stories." -Ursula K. Le Guin "Like John LeCarré, [O'Brian] has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from 'serious' fiction. O'Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have." -Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Patrick O'Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader... savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity." -Eudora Welty "O'Brian's eloquent admirers include not merely distinguished critics and reviewers but... thousands upon thousands of fervent readers who thank the gods for him.... [H]is work accomplishes nobly the three grand purposes of art: to entertain, to edify, and to awe." -Stephen Becker, Paris Review "For escapist reading, I especially like the sea novels of Patrick O'Brian." -Bill Bryson "O'Brian's narrative... provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises-comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity." -A. S. Byatt "I prefer the Aubrey-Maturin series to all others.... Every book is packed to absolute straining with erudition, wit, history, and thunderous action." -Joe Hill "All of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian [is on my shelves]." -Mindy Kaling, New York Times

Virginia Feito's Mrs. March was hailed as "a brilliant debut . . . [by] a writer who keeps pace with the grandees she invokes" (Sarah Ditum, Guardian)-from Daphne Du Maurier and Shirley Jackson to Patricia Highsmith. Now, Feito returns with her "silver-polish sentences and her eerie psychological acumen" (Constance Grady, Vox) to unleash an entirely new antihero on us all. Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess-she'll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate's dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family-Mr. Pounds can't keep his eyes off Winifred's chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband's wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . . Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026 SHORTLISTED FOR THE FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE 2025 A filthy and exhausted soldier emerges from the Mediterranean wilderness-he is escaping from an unspecified war, trying to flee incessant violence and find refuge in solitude. Meanwhile, on September 11, 2001, aboard a small cruise ship, a scientific conference takes place to pay tribute to renowned East German mathematician Paul Heudeber, a committed communist and anti-fascist, and a survivor of the camps at Buchenwald.The tension grows between these two narrative threads, and-pulled together in Mathias Énard's enchanting, brilliant, erudite prose-time itself seems to become tightly interwoven, drawn together by the immense stakes of love and politics, loyalty and belief, hope and survival.

Since the invasion of Ukraine and ban on foreign reporters, Russia seems to have sunk into an even deeper shadow than in the darkest times of the Soviet Union. Only by presenting himself as an historian was Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian able to penetrate the Russian heartland, leading to his groundbreaking cover story for Harpers' Magazine, "Behind the New Iron Curtain." In Volga Blues, Russian history and literature inform every step of Mian's revealing and perilous journey along Russia's most culturally significant river, the fulcrum of its history, "the mother." Along with Alessandro Cosmelli, his photographer; Vlad, their translator and fixer; and Katya, Vlad's girlfriend, Mian manages to gather firsthand accounts from ordinary Russians. They discuss not only the impact of the war, Western sanctions, and their country's isolation, but how Russian culture has changed as a result. Stalin is back in favor, Lenin has been downgraded as a "Europeanized intellectual." Newly sophisticated local and seasonal cuisine is all the rage. People cite centuries-old grievances to explain their fear of Western invasion, as they claim a willingness to accept nuclear apocalypse to save Russian pride. Talking with contemporary Russian intellectuals, entrepreneurs, priests, widows, mercenaries, and pacifists, Mian discovers how little the West knows about Russia and Russians. Deeply distrustful of democracy, yearning for the ideological and spiritual purity of the Orthodox Church, betrayed by and fearful of the West, and reassured by the brutal, fragile, ancient dream of an imperial civilization, they make clear that the Cold War has not yet ended. In visceral prose, Mian takes us across the floodplains where the Russian Orthodox faith first took root, where the Soviet empire asserted itself, and where the neo-imperial project of Vladimir Putin's post-Soviet autocracy is currently being consolidated. The result is a harrowing, haunting vision of today's great clash of civilizations-between Russia and the West-including a United States that at times seems uncannily similar.

Praise for the Aubrey/Maturin Series and Patrick O'Brian "The best historical novels ever written." -Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review "I love these books.... [They offer] the same sense of lived experience as Hilary Mantel.... They will sweep you away and return you delighted, increased and stunned. If the phrase 'Napoleonic war fiction' fills you with anticipation, then you don't need me to convince you to read [Patrick] O'Brian. But for the rest of you.... [P]lease, just trust me." -Nicola Griffith, NPR "A few books work their way... onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence-witness The Lord of the Rings, or Patrick O'Brian's sea stories." -Ursula K. Le Guin "Like John LeCarré, [O'Brian] has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from 'serious' fiction. O'Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have." -Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Patrick O'Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader... savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity." -Eudora Welty "O'Brian's eloquent admirers include not merely distinguished critics and reviewers but... thousands upon thousands of fervent readers who thank the gods for him.... [H]is work accomplishes nobly the three grand purposes of art: to entertain, to edify, and to awe." -Stephen Becker, Paris Review "For escapist reading, I especially like the sea novels of Patrick O'Brian." -Bill Bryson "O'Brian's narrative... provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises-comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity." -A. S. Byatt "I prefer the Aubrey-Maturin series to all others.... Every book is packed to absolute straining with erudition, wit, history, and thunderous action." -Joe Hill "All of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian [is on my shelves]." -Mindy Kaling, New York Times

For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the "secret of life". But over the last several decades, a quiet revolution has taken place. In a series of breathtaking discoveries, the biochemist Thomas R. Cech and a diverse cast of brilliant scientists have revealed that RNA-long overlooked as the passive servant of DNA-sits at the centre of biology's greatest mysteries. In The Catalyst, Cech brings together years of research to demonstrate that RNA is the true key to understanding life on Earth, from its origins to our future in the twenty-first century. A gripping journey of discovery, The Catalyst moves from the early experiments that first hinted at RNA's spectacular powers, to Cech's own paradigm-shifting finding that it can catalyse cellular reactions, to the cutting-edge biotechnologies poised to reshape our health. We learn how RNA-once thought merely to transmit DNA's genetic instructions to the cell's protein-making machinery-may have jump-started life itself, and how, at the same time, it can cut our individual lives short through viral diseases and cancer. We see how RNA is implicated in the ageing process and explore the darker depths of the supposed fountain of youth, telomerase. And we catch a thrilling glimpse into how RNA-powered therapies-from CRISPR, the revolutionary tool that uses RNA to rewrite the code of life, to the groundbreaking mRNA vaccines that have saved millions during the pandemic, and more-may enable us to improve and even extend life beyond nature's current limits. The Catalyst is a must-read guide to the present and future of biology and medicine.

"Guaranteed to make blood boil." -Janet Maslin, New York Times In Michael Lewis's game-changing bestseller, a small group of Wall Street iconoclasts realize that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders. They band together-some of them walking away from seven-figure salaries-to investigate, expose, and reform the insidious new ways that Wall Street generates profits. If you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you.